Nik Fish: Youth Gone Wild.

Nik Fish launches Wild Nights on River 94.9fm, a live broadcast at Family on Feb 15.

The www.nikfish.com.au Website will be online from Feb 11.

If you thought that Nik Fish was just another Southern DJ with a string of accolades and residencies to his name that don’t mean much when you live in Brisbane, think again. Apart from being one of the nicest blokes you’ll ever meet in dance music circles, Nik is close to becoming a cottage industry, not just a one-night soundtrack.

Nik is up there in that select group of Australian DJ’s who have stuck to their guns and stayed true to the scene for over a decade now, it’s only recently that some of them started reaping the benefits of that dedication with lucrative residencies, mix CD record contracts, ‘guest attraction’ billing interstate and a name recognition that guarantees them a decent wage spinning vinyl. In an era when words like ‘diversification’, ‘synergy’ and ‘cross promotion’ are used by businessmen and artists alike, Nik is making the leap from DJ with a following, to multi media entertainer. 

With a smick looking Website launching on February 11, a new mix CD, cannily titled ‘nikfish.com.au’ due to be released and a mini East Coast tour, Nik is the first to admit that branching out is vital if a DJ wants to make a living.

“You could call it self promotion, I don’t have a manager or a publicist, so in a sense it’s up to me to work out how I wanna be represented in the public eye.” Says the bloke who has already made several canny career moves, from his 1995 ARIA nomination for ‘The Winner Is’ with Southend to his packed weekly residency at Sublime in Sydney’s famous Home nightclub and last years Ministry of Sound ‘Hard NRG – The Album’ mix CD release, it’s obvious that Fish is determined to leave his mark on the Australian dance landscape

“As a DJ I’m in front of the public all the time. I sort of look at the ideology nowadays of DJs being like rock stars and, you know, every time I go interstate or something, they want a photo for street press or they want a photo for a flyer and it made sense to get it together and create a package, just like any performer I guess. You need to have something to sell yourself or to show what you're doing and that’s sort of what the Websites about. I've found a lot of budding bedroom DJs, male and female, they often ask me about where I started and stuff, general chit chat in clubs, and now they an go straight to the site and check it out.”

The ‘under-construction’ page of the Website shows a rather stylish looking Nik, digitally resplendent in what looks like a tres modern and streamlined site. Fish, who aint hard to look at, is humble about his pixilated image

“I’ve been told I look like I’m in an ad for an IT service or something, I should’ve hung some headphones around my neck or got out my record box, I dunno…” he laughs.

And Nik aint one of those DJs with a coterie of handlers, bookers and other assorted hangers-on; he’s a professional DIY, hands-on kinda guy, used to taking his own bookings.

“I like dealing with things like that. I've got long-term loyalties with certain promoters around the country, I don’t tend to shop myself around, as a DJ. Like any business, I’ve got people that I work with regularly on certain gigs and we work closely, so in that sense I don’t really need a manager. But it would be good to filter out some of the junk.”

The positive thing about having a manger is they can sort out dodgy promoters on your behalf, as being shafted is almost a certainty when one chooses to be a muso of some sort. Nik himself was shafted royally on several occasions.

“Most definitely, but more in the earlier rave days when the parties where set up in illegal warehouses and nothing was above board anyway, there was a lot of cash changing hands...I mean we’re going back ten years here. There will always be times when a party gets shut down early or the party will be cancelled or the promoter hasn’t made enough numbers to cover it and then give you the old sob story of ‘I’ve lost money’. I mean it still happens now.” He says with a trace of bemusement. “In the last year I’ve had very top end, high end promoters plead with me on the night as they’ve got their pen in the chequebook…I mean business is business in one sense, I agree to do a job with a promoter, and they agree to pay an amount, they should commit to it no matter what.”

A town close to Nik’s heart is Vegas, having close ties with several promoters and DJ’s around town, Fish hasn’t been in these parts for the better part of a year.

“The Family gig is quite a special kind of gig for me to play, last time I came up was Monastery about twelve months ago it was around Valentines Day as well. I’m doing a three city in three-day tour; I’ll do Brisbane on Friday night at Family and that’s promoting the Wild Nights program that’s going to air on River 94.9, I’ve worked closely with the promoter whose also involved with the radio show and he asked me to come up and support him with this, so the live broadcast is really good, playing Family is a good thing cause I’ve never played there before. I hear it the big place in Brisbane, and then I also get a chance to promote my CD, so it 's like a pretty full gig in terms of what’s involved. So the CD is something I’m working on that whole weekend coming up, I want to promote the CD and also to promote the idea of the Website, I just thought I’d kill a few birds with one stone. A double whammy.”